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Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Binary Clock application has been updated to version 2.0 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This update improves they layout and design of the menus, as well as add an option to upgrade for additional features for only a dollar. After upgrading, you have the option of setting the Binary Clock, to display by default while the phone is charging, or plugged into a computer. This setting can be turned on or off in the options page.

How to read

A binary coded decimal can be read with each column added up with each light worth (from top to bottom) 8, 4, 2, and 1, and the column on the left being worth 40, 20, and 10. For example the time in the above image would be 16 hours, 9 minutes, and 25 seconds.

Links & Information

While the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is the most popular touchscreen devices with 48.7% marketshare, the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 is clearly catching up as the most popular of the BlackBerry 7 devices. Also it looks as if I was right in regards to the production of the 9380 and 9790 being a waste of RIM’s time, and unneeded fragmentation.

Looking at the distribution of screen resolution on BlackBerry touchscreens shows why supporting the 9790 is not a priority for any developers. Accounting for just 0.88% of all touchscreen devices it is far to unique with no reason to purchases it instead of the Bold 9900. The Curve 9380 however can easily be supported due to its many similarities with the Torch 9800 and Storm series. In fact its 480×360 screen resolution is present in over half of all touchscreen BlackBerrys in the wild.

These stats are based on December downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated.

In the below charts percentages are shown from October (the month before the release of version 3.0) and December (the month after the release of version 3.0). All downloads and sales on the PlayBook were excluded from these stats. All languages that are not currently supported are lumped into the ‘Other’ category. First a look at downloads of the free game Pixelated in October and December.

English and Spanish are by far the most popular languages. After adding support for more languages there is a bit of an increase in the percentage of users with Spanish as their primary language, but a bit of a decrease among speakers of Dutch, while French and Portuguese are mostly flat.

The next charts show purchases of Pixelated Plus from October and December.

This chart shows an increase of percent of purchases made by users of Spanish and French. Even more interesting is that the increase seen here is larger then the size of the increase seen in the free version of Pixelated. Sales to users speaking Dutch, however, are down (similar to what was seen in the top graph).

So perhaps there are some advantages to localization. But the results are (at best) mixed. Still it is important to remember that not users have English as their preferred language.

Last night the news broke that Mike L. and Jim B. were stepping down as Co-CEOs of RIM. While this move will be loved on Wall Street, the thought of the company’s founders being pushed out scares me a bit in regards to the future of the companies products. Historically when the founders of a company step down the results are not good (as seen with Apple without Jobs and Yahoo without Yang).

Still things to seem to be promising about Thorsten Heins as CEO. For one he is being promoted from within the company. Secondly is that he has master’s degree in science and physics. My opinion is that technology companies need to be run by engineers rather then by businessmen.

“You can trace the problems to when the MBAs kind of took control of the company,” Shippey said. There were plenty of people, he said, who saw the change coming and alerted the company. But it would have taken an innovator, not necessarily an MBA, to make the moves that were needed in a timely way.

So far the rumors about Heins are positive, so there is reason to be optimistic. But RIM must remain a technology driven company (even if that isn’t really what Wall Street wants).

Two years ago 10,000 Farkle was released as my second game in BlackBerry AppWorld. Here are the highlights of the last two years.

History of Farkle

January 2010 – Version 1.0 released The first version of 10,000 Farkle was released in BlackBerry AppWorld.

May 2010 – Version 1.1 released This update added support for achievements.

September 2010 – Version 1.2 released Vast improvements to the animations, and support for OS6 devices.

February 2011 – Version 1.3 released Improvements to graphics and further OS6 support.

August 2011 – Version 1.4 released Support for OS7 devices was added.

January 2011 – Version 1.5 released Added auto-saving of game progress.

How to Play

Farkle gives you six dice to roll and awards points for a straight, three pairs or three or more of the same number. Fewer points ares also awarded for each individual 1 and 5. Any dice that do not score can be re-rolled for additional points. If all 6 dice can be scored, all of the dice can be re-rolled on the same turn.

The skill in this game comes from knowing how far to push your luck, and which scoring combinations to take, and which to re-roll.

The default game mode gives you 10 turns to score as many points as you can. The 10,000 point mode is the traditional way to play, where the goal is to reach 10,000 points in as few turns as possible. The two competitive game modes “vs Friend” and “vs Computer” both use the traditional race to 10,000 points.

How to Play

The goal to Black Out is to tap the tiles, so that they all get ‘blacked out’. This is complicated because whenever you tap to flip a tile, it also flips all of the tiles surrounding it. As such it requires a well laid out strategy.

In order to accommodate different difficulties, the game supports board sizes from 3×3 all the way up to a 10×10 grid. Furthermore, there is also a hint button in case you find yourself in need of help.

The above chart shows the breakdown (as of last month) of PlayBook OS versions currently in use. As was the case in September, the vast majority of users are running the latest OS.

Because I feel that it is unreasonable to expect end users to be running a beta version of the software, users of OS 2.0 (and other unreleased versions) were included in the group of OS 1.0.8 users. The percent of people running the beta was in the low single digits.

Data comes from December 2011 downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated.

10,000 Farkle has been updated to version 1.5 in BlackBerry AppWorld. The biggest improvement in this update is that you can now exit the app in the middle of a game, and then resume the game, when you restart the application. This new version of Farkle also makes some improvements to the efficiency of the app, as well as some visual tweaks.

How to Play

Farkle gives you six dice to roll and awards points for a straight, three pairs or three or more of the same number. Fewer points ares also awarded for each individual 1 and 5. Any dice that do not score can be re-rolled for additional points. If all 6 dice can be scored, all of the dice can be re-rolled on the same turn.

The skill in this game comes from knowing how far to push your luck, and which scoring combinations to take, and which to re-roll.

The default game mode gives you 10 turns to score as many points as you can. The 10,000 point mode is the traditional way to play, where the goal is to reach 10,000 points in as few turns as possible. The two competitive game modes “vs Friend” and “vs Computer” both use the traditional race to 10,000 points.

About Xploding Boxes

Xploding Boxes is a strategy game for BlackBerry and Nook, where the goal of the game is to start a chain reaction that will explode all of the boxes on the screen. Each level gives you a different number of touches, and requires a different strategy to solve. The first 25 levels are free, while the full 260 levels can be accessed by making an in-application payment and requiring no further downloads. This game is available for the PlayBook, most smartphones running OS 5.0 or higher, and the Nook Color and Nook Tablet.

The above chart shows the country of PlayBook users based on downloads of the game Pixelated in the month of December. The game was downloaded in 122 different countries during the month, but more then half of the downloads came from Canada.

The top 10 countries were (in order) Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Australia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Argentina.

There may be some sampling errors due to regional popularity of the game Pixelated, or the fact that the game is only available in English, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese. Also because data was only used from the month of December, these numbers may be affected by regional promotions and discounts during this time frame.

December showed an uptick in usage of OS 7.0 which is now up to 11.4 percent. This growth however, mostly came at the expense of users of OS 6.0 which saw little to no growth. There was also no significant growth in the use of OS 5.0 in the past month.

This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of December 2010 through the end of December 2011.

“In terms of NFC as an emerging technology, one thing that’s important to understand is that it’s not restricted to payment-related functions. As a developer, you can utilize NFC in a number of interesting ways, from tag-reading smart posters to emulating something like a campus card.”

NFC is a big deal, and it’s ability to replace a corporate/student ID is far more useful then its ability to replace a credit card.